


Philosophy of Choice

by Izzy_Grinch



Series: Trespassing Boundaries [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Breaking and Entering, First Time Topping, First time with a man, Love/Hate, M/M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Seduction, Sexual Tension, Unexpected Visitors, at this point Arno is probably too gentle with de Sade uwu, de Sade is like "personal space? what personal space? never heard of her!", de Sade reading Arno's correspondence, gentle strangling is mentioned, i believe it is an almost canon trope now, no actual description of sex sry, no sleepy cuddles sorry maybe next time (de Sade told himself while leaving), not exactly knife play but you get the idea, spending night together, threatening with a sword
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:38:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch
Summary: In the evening he finds a visitor waiting in his room above the cafe. In the morning the visitor is still there.





	Philosophy of Choice

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Философия выбора](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17434433) by [Izzy_Grinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch). 



> It is important to emphasize that in the original version of this story Arno uses a formal "you" every time he addresses de Sade, due to their age and social status difference, and Arno's personal wish to be as cold and indifferent with the marquis as possible (yeah, well, the last one– he kinda fails it).

Arno sneaks into the mansion unnoticed − to avoid his intendant with an endless heap of financial papers; or being pulled into any kind of political debates, always blazing near the stage; or making excuses to _madame_ Gouze why her request hasn’t been fulfilled yet. He leaps over two steps at once, holding his clinking sheath close to his thigh, and then he freezes at the threshold of his room. He hasn’t even felt anything. The air growing thick of perfume. The presence of someone uninvited. The intrusion. The marquis smiles holding a letter.

“Oh, that joyful and naive poetry of youth... Especially the Alpine piece, where _mademoiselle_ pictures both of you herding little goats. Extremely touching as I find it.”

He lifts and stretches a corner of his lips, showing his teeth and a sharp, almost predatory canine; and only then he moves his eyes upward, waiting for reaction and getting it immediately. Arno points at the parchment fiercely.

“Who gave you the right?”

“Gave?” De Sade raises his brows; he paints them black and pains Arno with his carefree tone. “Frankly, I took it myself, wasn’t that tricky. You don’t seem to lock the doors at night, do you? The times are uneasy now...”

He folds the sheet barely touching it, slides it back into the envelope and runs the very tips of his fingers over the place where the paper’s been cut before, as if sealing it, as if the writings will become safer after this.

“And one of them is even more charming. Where’s−” he shuffles the letters like the marked playing cards. “Ah, there it is!”

A convulsion pierces Arno from head to toes, as if the waters of Seine just pulled back and he discovered all that’s been hidden there in the mud for ages; as if the hands of the marquis just traveled through his guts with a wicked curiosity, plunging so deep, to the very elbow, rolling his kidneys playfully like the river pebbles, plucking a raceme from his lungs. Arno is always driven by the instincts. The letter is a feather, slowly falling back into the casket; the gaze of de Sade is a viper, slowly slithering up the unsheathed sword, along with the faltering lights of a chandelier and fractured reflections of the dark room. He puts down the carved cover that crumples and crushes a white paper corner, sticking out. Arno clenches the handle; there is just a couple of inches between the sharp steel and the sharp chin.

“My dear boy, the threats are of no use at all unless you bring them into effect.”

“That I’m about to do.”

He tilts the sword a little, twisting; the flares pour down its facets like a molten gold.

“Really? Well then let me surrender myself to such a unique moment with all the befitting dignity. The life can be undignified indeed, but never the death.”

With just a finger the marquis gently moves the blade away − or maybe it’s Arno who lets him do this; stands up, neatly aligning every crease on his clothes − or at least on what seems to represent them; smoothens his embroidered lapels, and disturbs the flickering flames while moving past them to lie down on the bed, a pose so peaceful like he’s about to read an anonymous pamphlet. A triangle of his bared skin, from his neck almost to the stomach − it’s like an aim; an angle of his lifted shoulder − it’s almost perfect for a strike. Arno is annoyed, Arno is confused; he approaches, slowly and cautiously, as if by stepping on the same spot where the heels of de Sade have trodden recently, he can fall in a carefully set trap.

“What do you need? Why are you here?”

The marquis examines him with his temple propped in his palm; the marquis is a taunt, a viscous mockery, impossible to wash away completely once it touches you. Arno ponders that he can probably throw de Sade out, with just one hand maybe, grabbing him by the shirt, like a tavern rowdy, too drunk to stand for himself, but there is nothing to grab on − just a bared chest and beaded threads with Polynesian pearls, they will break and roll around, tapping on the floorboards.

“Ah, it’s merely an innocent courtesy visit,” he waves a hand as if holding a fan, but it’s suffocating around him, and the air is numb. “ _La Cour des Miracles_ had some business on the land of _la Cité_ , I had some positive predictions about this evening, and since I only predict the knocking of a bailiff or a clumsy hustle of the gendarmerie − those do not knock, sadly − the true crime it would’ve been to never succumb to this particular conjuncture.”

Arno winces.

“You’re insane.”

The marquis laughs shortly and dryly and sits up − like a tiny crossbow is getting ready to shoot; Arno unconsciously awaits for a spring to click and moves back a little.

“It’s quite the contrary, dear Arno. Quite... the contrary...”

His moves are steady, measured even; Arno startles when a wave of discordant singing bursts down in the cafe − and when a hand flies up to his face. He growls, shielding himself, crumples the bracelets, heavy of gems − they prick the wrist, the pale veins and his own palm; de Sade’s grin widens, but still he tries and reaches, strained, until he’s close enough to take off the hood. Arno freezes. The shadows soaked by the bookshelves are suddenly too shallow to hide him again, and so he’s standing naked, exposed, hold up for derision, almost knocked senseless. The marquis slides his fingers softly over Arno’s, between them, through them, takes the sword aiming at the ground, and then he pulls Arno closer by the belt and harshly pushes the blade back into its sheath. The hissing sound is like a whip, slowly creeping along the spine; Arno feels his nostrils trembling. The belt clanks falling down, and Arno shudders heavily.

“Don’t you find it entertaining, dear Arno? For it is I...” he unfastens the chainlet of Arno’s coat under his chin and extrudes the big plain buttons through the buttonholes. “...who should be...” he walks around him slowly, following his steps with the hand gliding over Arno’s shoulder, the shoulder blades, stinging with tension, the tied hair, and the coat drops down under his touch like an animal skin. “...scared.”

Eyes to eyes; Arno hastily grabs his throat, spurns him away − one foot away, two. He wants to snap that he isn’t fucking scared, this isn’t fear, or fright, or− A long and thin smile splits up the marquis’ face. He steps forward, pressing with his Adam’s apple, moans out a strangled exhale into the space that just appeared between them and is already gone; his eyelids flickering.

“You will need an endeavor much fierce to actually hurt me.”

It takes one more step to make his moan hoarse and wither; Arno, suddenly stubbed with confusion, doubt and shame, draws his hand back, and then the gasping mouth kisses him. De Sade is so eager, so demanding, so responsive that Arno’s first impulse is to recoil away from the tongue, the opened lips, the hands slowly cutting through the next layer of his clothes − the vest, one clasp by one, downward from the head, like gutting a fish. Arno slides his palm to the side of the marquis’ neck and up a little, to the nape where the true color of his hair peeps from under the constricting dryness of a starch, and snatches the wig, that stupid tribute to the ridiculous fashion. The marquis’ hair is dark, slightly wet and tied into a ponytail that comes apart under the rough caress. The scarlet bow on Arno’s neck almost chokes him, the stiff collar cuts into his skin, and he tugs on them blindly while de Sade is too busy dissolving into his own ravenous slowness. They undress until there’s nothing left on him, and nothing but the tangle of beadings and silk ribbons left on the marquis.

“No,” he says when Arno tries to grab a handful of them, advancing, and when he disobeys, and the pearls, pressed tightly between their chests, are like a sharper’s dices that fall on the table without rolling over, too heavy of lead inside of them.

The marquis backs to the bookcase behind him, Arno’s weight makes him lean on the cross formed by the wooden shelves, and who knows, maybe the book spines will imprint in his bare skin. The heels have robbed him of two inches, but still he looks down at Arno as if seeking to peek into his mind and corrupt those parts of it that remained untouched. And so he touches with an unexpected strength, with an expected obsceneness, following the natural lines of Arno’s body, strokes his buttock and palms it so firmly that Arno feels where the soft fingertips end and the short nails begin, and then he shrinks when they trace the path from his lower back to his front and settle between his legs.

De Sade opens his arms in a quizzical gesture, and Arno moves his gaze away.

“So distrustful... and so untempted... However, I stand before you _sans armes_ in the sense in which these words are... usually interpreted.”

The Arno’s heart is pounding somewhere in his throat, his face is burning; his pupils dash to the unevenly burning chandelier, and Arno forces himself not to recede even more when de Sade tracks his gaze and comes to blow out the fire.

“Ah, do you really find the wicks and the wax to be the most dangerous weapon in this chamber?”

“They could be. In your hands.”

The marquis’ voice is fluid and volatile, it coats, searching for the tiniest vulnerabilities; Arno heard steel in it − once, but now it melts like honey, turning into whisper. De Sade lifts Arno’s chin, smiling strangely, as if only to himself.

“In my hands I hold the most fearsome weapon of France.”

He kisses Arno on the lips, on the bottom half of them, briefly, with some laziness or something that maybe can be called fondness, and then he falls on his knees, holding onto Arno’s shoulders, his scarred arms, his shuddering hips; he does this without breaking the line connecting their eyes − Arno’s, hidden under the heavy and gloomy lashes; Sade’s, framed with the wide-open lids, − even for a second. The line is broken anyway as the sight becomes unbearable.

In his bed on the second floor of Cafe _Theatre_ Arno is always alone as he is on his path of an assassin, with the masters of the Brotherhood coldly watching his deeds; as he is in his revenge and pursuit after the thing people once called justice − under the layers of endless noise and thickening filth Paris starts to forget its true meaning. They make love ardently and effusively, although this is not love at all, of course, − an act of madness, a downfall into the abyss even darker than the night outside their windows, a violation of the humans’ laws and God’s, already coming apart at their seams under the cuts of a hidden blade.

The marquis calls him by the name; Arno doesn’t call him at all, just asks him once, calmly: “De Sade”, as the marquis bursts with some obscenities. It feels like he sees everything with the eyes of a stranger: his fingers on the ivory neck, shadows turning them into the spreading wings of a dead bird, the marquis’ palms guiding them, holding them closer, until Arno draws his hands back − again, and leans down, sliding his elbows along the crumpled sheets, and touches the skin next to the Adam’s apple with his lips, and then hears the marquis laughing − laughing at him, quietly and briskly.

The dawn is faint. Arno is chilled by the creeping realization; his damp and tensed body is chilled too − by the wind, carrying the smell of smoke, and street sewage, and imminence of disaster, awaiting to devour the city. He speaks, huddling up a little:

“You can stay... ‘til morning. But I insist on your leaving before the cafe opens.”

De Sade snorts with sparkling amusement.

“Ah, such an intriguing plot! An infamous marquis sneaks out of a slumbering cafe, among the walls of which a secret society of assassins found a shelter to serve the people? Ah− and there’s blood on his hands! _Incroyable!_ ”

Arno turns his head and stares at the marquis for a while, silently, but neither his smirk nor his expressions vanish, and so Arno lies down uncomfortably on the very edge of his bed, and his nape, the exposed neck, the shoulder blades under the blanket stretched between two bodies − they all grow unbearably hot of premonition of a touch that never happens.

He is awaken by the sounds which are uncommon there − the sounds of another person. He catches a short moment when the back with old white scars near the waist − he doesn’t know whether those are the marks of military service, countless imprisonments or lecherous pleasures, and he doesn’t dare to ask, − disappears under the rumpled shirt and the green jacket. With just two fingers de Sade pulls a sealed envelope from a pocket and turns on his heels.

“What is it?”

“A humble input to the good cause,” he grins. “Some useful, or at least I do hope so, information concerning the subject of your current searches.”

Arno springs from the bed without caring to listen to further explanations, and de Sade’s grin grows longer, and his eyes begin to wander all over him, − Arno senses it like a blade of a knife, flying down his collarbones, but all he finds is his own embarrassing nudity and a pink ribbon tied around his neck. He yanks at the silk, but just makes the knot tighter; he yanks the blanket from the bed, yanks the letter from de Sade’s hands.

“He left the city! At night!” Arno snatches the words out angrily; it is too late now. His blood and thoughts seethe. “You knew it all along!”

“Perhaps...” the marquis slightly nods. “You could, oh, you surely could have climbed the nearest roof and followed the carriage to maybe even collect the crumbs of conversation. Or... upon his return you can find out if there are some... surprising news.”

Arno almost snarls.

“That was up to me to decide!”

“Well...” de Sade catches a fold slipping down Arno’s hip and carefully tucks it back. “And you have decided, my dear Arno, haven’t you?”

The marquis leaves him to the thundering silence of the house, his steps fade reaching the main staircase, but their echo − the echo will remain forever in these walls. Arno throws the letter away, dashes to his belt and fumbles through it feverishly for a dagger to hook and to cut the knot, and after it’s gone he looks, dumbstruck, at the rings of silk snakes coiling up next to his bed.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a veeeery lazy reference to de Sade's _"Philosophy in the Bedroom / La Philosophie dans le Boudoir"_
> 
>  _*sans armes_ − unarmed (...and that supposed to be a vague dick joke)  
>  _*incroyable_ − unbelievable


End file.
